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Bombón el Perro (2004)

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From Time Out London

Hardship seems innate in Carlos Sorin’s Patagonia, as if it issued from the doleful dusty desert that, under mockingly wide skies, rolls on for mile after mile. Juan Villegas – ‘Coco’ to his friends – is the wrong side of 50, and the wrong side of productive society, having lately lost his job working in a petrol station forecourt. (‘Now they use a pretty girl,’ he notes without bitterness.) He tries travelling salesmanship, hawking hand-carved knives, but people only want to barter: a cop takes a knife as a bribe; then, as a thank-you gift for mending her car, a woman at the roadside gives him a great white dog – a pure-bred perro argentino. Coco’s initially unpersuaded, but ‘le chien’ proves a staunch companion, and brings him some fiscal luck: first a gig as a security guard, then recommendations to hunts, races and prize shows.Ostensibly a shaggy-dog story, ‘Bombón’ traces the pair’s progress through a succession of by-the-way incidents and character encounters; what tension there is turns on the dog’s commodity value (cash still circulates in Argentina’s canine economy, if not in its human version). The underlying irony is that the dog’s worth is reduced to the same potentially humiliating economic calculus of manliness as his owner – le chien has trouble performing at the stud farm – but it’s one that Sorin plays bittersweetly rather than savagely. The film’s bold, crisp compositions, pretty light, lolling landscapes and guitar accompaniment (the one sentimental note) don’t so much sugar the pill as cast it to the winds; you can read the real story – of humility and sidelined grace – etched into Villegas’ face. It’s a lovely film.

Author: NB

Time Out London Issue 1817: June 15-22 2005

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